Bowie has used the metaphor of dust and the stuff (ephemeral ciphers and cinders) that dreams are made of throughout his career--redefining and rebirthing Stardust from the burning embers of his premature destruction:

In 1987's 'Shining Star' from the album Never Let Me Down Bowie depicts the lives of low life losers, drug addicts, prostitutes, ex-cons, and gangsters and how they still search for happiness despite their lives of wretchedness. Bowie goes on to describe a horrible room: "Dean was seen with a two bag purchase. He was lying dead on his mother's bed." For the protagonist of 'Shining Star' there was no escape from this fatal and fated room.

In the song 'Station To Station' from the 1976 album of the same name, Bowie explains: "Here are we, one magical moment, such is the stuff from where dreams are woven." In this song the protagonist reaches the spiritual heights and depths simultaneously. From "crown to kingdom" the mystic-dreamer drives like a demon. A lover of folly is befooled by love not the side effects of some drug, jolting awake his faith and his sleepy heart.

And instead of rediscovering moondust in the eyes of the resurrected "Space Boy", we unearth (in the guise of the occultist, of course) an insane lad/a silly boy blinded by darts. Has this magician-dreamer been cursed by hopeless dreams? Whatever the answer, it's still "too late to be hateful or grateful, too late to be late again." The prophet says goodbye to dreams deferred, to his unpaid and overdue debts, his dormant hopes and dead desires and he says hello to "wishful new beginnings - built to last!"